Change of Heart

Midway in the roll call on the $5.7 billion tax bill, the House chamber began to buzz with excitement. It was clear that the bill (TIME, Oct. 22) was going down to defeat. The big surprise was that 64 Democrats, some of them swayed by a last-minute letter from the C.I.O. urging rejection, jumped, the traces to join the Republicans in voting no.

Before the roll call was finished, House Speaker Sam Rayburn was busy scribbling messages summoning his lieutenants to a conference. There he hammered one point: this isn't a question of a good tax bill or a bad tax bill; it's a matter of this tax bill or none at all before adjournment. For the next two days, while party fixers hustled around to put the pressure on the deviating Democrats, a House committee went through the formality of a new conference with the Senate on modifying the bill's provisions. The face-saving changes were inconsequential (sample: adding an excise tax on electric garbage-disposal units, and removing one from children's ice and roller skates).

To make sure of passage the second time, Sam Rayburn turned his gavel over to New Jersey's Edward Hart and made one of his rare speeches from the well of the chamber. The House passed the bill by 185 to 160, sent it to the White House. Harry Truman signed the next day, to make certain that the new personal-income-tax provisions will go into effect Nov. 1.

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